The U.S. Open’s top 10 players for peak performance
By Bill Felber
5. Tiger Woods, -1.51 peak (1999-2008)
Woods is the author of the single greatest performance in U.S. Open history, his amazing 15-stroke win at Pebble Beach in 2000.
That translated to a margin of 4.34 standard deviations ahead of the field average. To put that in perspective, no other player in the history of men’s Major Championship golf has won by more than 3.75 standard deviations, much less 4.3.
The second most dominant showing in the history of the U.S. Open was Rory McIlroy’s 2011 walkover at Congressional, and it only measured 3.35 standard deviations better…nearly a full standard deviation worse than Woods.
So why doesn’t Woods rank higher on this list? The reason is that his decade of greatest dominance – 1999-2008 – happens to include one of his worst Open performances. That came at Winged Foot in 2006, when Tiger missed the cut.
Among the 10 greatest competitors (for peak performance) in Open history, Woods is the only one who missed a cut during that peak. But for that one disastrous performance, Woods would rank two places higher than he does.
Even so, Woods was pretty good. Between 1999 and 2008, he won three times – Pebble in 2000, Bethpage in 2002 and Torrey Pines in 2008.
He was second to the surprising Michael Campbell in 2005 and again in 2007. Two strokes behind Aaron Baddeley through three rounds at Oakmont, he caught the Australian early Sunday afternoon, but was himself caught and passed by the eventual champion, Angel Cabrera.